Building Podcasting's Bigger Stage, New Apple Podcasts Video Partners, & More

Author

Gavin Gaddis
March 20th, 2026

by Gavin Gaddis

What a weekend! Thank you to everyone who came by the Podcast Movement Evolutions space at SXSW, it was wonderful meeting faces industry new and old. Now that we’re all back home, let’s get into the news from this week.

New Hosting Partners, Potential Release Date for Apple Podcasts Video Upgrade

Monday’s issue of Podnews covered a new slate of hosting partners supporting the upcoming HLS video update for Apple Podcasts. Announced during Apple Podcasts’ keynote at Podcast Movement Evolutions, the new hosts include Transistor, Audiomeans, PodBean, Captivate, RSS.com, and Podigee. They join the previously announced group of Acast, Omny Studio, ART19, and Simplecast. 

Apple Podcasts also announced it has surpassed 12 million episodes with automatically-generated chapters since launching the feature in November 2025. Podnews also notes Apple Podcasts’ keynote presentation at Evolutions was the industry giant’s first ever official appearance at a North American podcast conference.

Thursday’s issue of Podnews covered a Mastodon post from John Spurlock. The big video upgrade to Apple Podcasts incorporating HLS will arrive with iOS 26.4. A release candidate build (a feature-complete build ready for final tests) of iOS 26.4 has been posted, which Spurlock estimates could mean the final release will be in a window from Wednesday March 25 to Monday, March 30. The release client version shows that when users first open Apple Podcasts after updating they’ll be greeted with a splash screen highlighting video podcasting features.

Sounds Profitable Partner and Podcast Movement President Bryan Barletta reflects on Podcast Movement Evolutions’ first year as an official integrated event within SXSW, which took place in Austin, TX this past weekend. The revamped Evolutions moved away from traditional hotel ballroom-style conference structure, streamlining down to one track and placing the conference in the middle of one of the leading creator and innovation-focused events in the U.S. A quote from Barletta: 

“We designed this event to be the home base for the podcast industry within the larger SXSW event. Even with no promotion by SXSW directly, our event was consistently active at all times, nearing capacity at others, and on Saturday night fully hit capacity with a full night dedicated to celebrating the launch of Companion that included a live acoustic performance by Andy Grammer and a conversation with Penn Badgley. Our programming throughout the weekend was intentionally curated to spark curiosity, drive discussion, and of course, entertain.”

In addition, the event featured keynotes from Apple and YouTube, as well as new research debuted by Sounds Profitable Partner Tom Webster. Live podcast episode recordings included Table Read, Scalable, and a special episode of Broken Record featuring guest Maya Hawke. 

The new format and location of Podcast Movement Evolutions was such a hit, Podcast Movement has already confirmed the conference will return to SXSW in 2027. Barletta frames Podcast Movement and Sounds Profitable as “stages and spotlights” for the industry. Connective tissue that provides opportunity, support, research, and advice. All of which is made possible with the support of partners who enable taking big swings to uplift the business of podcasting in the wider media ecosystem.

Podcasting also received its flowers over SXSW, both at Podcast Movement Evolutions and beyond. On Sunday, Oxford Road and Libsyn took over the PME space to present the inaugural Indie PaC Awards, an evening celebrating independent podcasters with host Killer Mike. On Monday the 2026 iHeartPodcast Awards took place at ACL Live in the Moody Theater in Austin, TX. Comedian Ego Nwodim hosted the evening celebrating the “most entertaining and innovative podcasts of 2025.” 

 The new partnership makes full multi-platform attribution free for all advertisers and agencies running campaigns across the YMH Studios network. As of the announcement, attribution coverage for audio (RSS and Megaphone), Spotify streaming, and YouTube video is included in all campaigns without minimum spend, category restrictions, or additional negotiations required. By covering attribution costs, YMH Studios addresses a persistent friction point in podcast advertising. A quote from Alan Abdine, YMH Studios Head of Ad Revenue & Partnerships:

“Attribution costs have become a line-item negotiation on too many deals. We decided to solve that problem once, for all of our partners, across the entire network. Streaming and video measurement has its realities, we’re not ignoring them. We’ve invested in the best available solution for every environment and made the entire package free for every buyer. That’s what makes this different, and that’s how we operate.”

Magellan AI GM of Measurement Jim Ballas noted both advertisers and publishers benefit from performance measurement built from directly-observable data, rather than modelling on its own. 

Australian Advertising and Data Developments

It’s been a busy week for Australia, so I’m bringing all three stories into one piece. First up: Amazon Ads and Spotify have announced a strategic partnership to give Australian advertisers programmatic access to Spotify’s audio and video inventory through Amazon DSP. The deal combines Amazon’s vast shopping and streaming data with Spotify’s 751 million monthly listeners, leading to a more funneled and targeted ad campaigns across audio, video, and connected TV. The new collaboration enables podcast advertisers in the growing Australian market to incorporate Spotify’s high-quality content alongside Amazon’s wide-ranging CTV inventory for more effective full-funnel planning, activation, and measurement in a single solution. 

Continuing on the advertising side of Australia: IAB Australia named the Future of Measurement one of its three strategic focus areas for 2026. The FoM initiative will review current practices, datasets, and measurement approaches in Australia’s advertising industry to identify gaps and define future requirements. Currently, the FoM project is accepting emails from interested decision-makers, influencers, practitioners and stakeholders across media owners, ad agencies, brands, suppliers, vendors, and industry bodies who would like to participate in industry research. The project will unveil findings at the 10th annual MeasureUp conference in Sydney on September 2, 2026. Pitches for MeasureUp are open until May 29. 

Finally: The Australian Communications and Media Authority has published Trends and developments in viewing and listening 2024–25, giving an overview of consumption trends based on consumer surveys. In 2025, 52% of Australian adults consumed podcasts or non-music audio weekly via online services—up from 49% in 2022. 

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Quick Hits

While they may not be top story material, the articles below from this week are definitely worth your time: